The News Corporation took several significant steps on Monday toward preparing to charge readers for access to its content online.
The company said that it had acquired an electronic reading platform called Skiff and had made an investment in a company that was developing pay models for newspapers and magazines.
In other words: It’s the beginning of the end of online news as we’ve known it for the last several years. Others are sure to follow New Corp’s lead. So be it.
Some will greet those developments with curses for Mr. Murdoch and his disciples. Not me. Yes, these changes could eventually limit the variety of sources we can access online. But I can live with that. We get what we pay for. Journalism is not free.